Wrote a post about how much I was enjoying Soundgarden’s Down on the Upside once upon a time. That came in 2018 when the whole record really caught the headspace I was in during that year. It’d been on my iTunes library for I think a couple years up until then though, a decision that stemmed from stumbling upon its opening track ‘Pretty Noose’ on YouTube one day. What year it was, I can’t remember. Why I decided to watch its music video (above), I don’t know. Was probably on a Soundgarden/Chris Cornell-related binge or something. But I’m very sure that it was from that first watch of it that I might have just struck some gold.

Chris Cornell songs are notoriously hard to sing for anyone. I’ve tried many a time. There are actual professional singers who’ll cover his written material and never come close to the original. But here on ‘Pretty Noose’, Cornell seems to take things to another level. He sings really high here. Not in a high-pitch/falsetto kind of way, but he’s delivering each word at the uppermost part of his chest and with great power too. It can even look like he finds it difficult to go through himself if you were to search live performances of the track, even from 1996. But still, he sounds too damn good while doing it on the studio version, as you probably would expect. Everything starts off with what I can only describe as this slimy guitar line that, with a string bend, collides with the introduction of the full band really coming together to start the first verse. Matt Cameron sounds like he has eight arms on the drums throughout, while the guitars and bass all follow these falling/ascending chord progressions that make up the melodic centre of the track.

When Cornell passed away in 2017, I remember seeing comments in YouTube under this video along the lines of “Oof, these lyrics, yeesh, hit so hard now” etc. etc., which sort of irked me a little because suicide really isn’t what the song is about. Clearly, the imagery is there. But the lyrics more concern a huge attraction to something that isn’t good for you and having a huge sense of regret upon obtaining that thing that seduced you so much. At least that’s what I’ve always got from it. In Cornell’s words, it’s about “an attractively packaged bad idea … something that seems great at first and then comes back to bite you.” So I guess I was never that far off.